Free The Thompson Gunner by Nick Earls Page B

says matter-of-factly. ‘You can let me know if there’s a problem.’
    He pushes a blue rubber dental dam into my mouth and clips it around the tooth. The drill whines and goes to work, and the sucker that’s hooked over my lower front teeth pulls water and saliva out noisily.
    He laughs at something in
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, right when I’m sure he’s working the drill down deep into my tooth. It’s not one of the more slapstick moments, not even a great line. I think he’s laughing at the nuances of a Woody Harrelson facial expression that is surely happening somewhere beyond his right ear, so what the hell’s he doing to my mouth?
    I manage to say ‘Uuh’ which had more to it in my headbut comes out in the language only dentists know, and he explains that he’s seen the first part of the movie a couple of times, and he particularly likes this scene.
    â€˜Don’t you think it’s what he’s best at?’ he says. ‘Playing this kind of character? Woody Harrelson, I mean.’
    He keeps working, I fall for the movie more than I expect to. Matthew McConaughey takes his shirt off. The dentist finishes drilling, and then we wait as the computer gets to work designing my crown.
    We’ve got fifteen minutes, the assistant tells me, and she points me in the right direction for the bathroom. I’m dizzy and I lurch to the door with my bib swinging loosely on its chain, the enormous sunnies still in place and the blue rubber dental dam hanging out of my mouth. Which is still jammed open with the hardware that fixes the dam in place, so I’m slurping up saliva as I go. On the way past, the receptionist pushes tissues into my hand. I head off down the corridor, as instructed, turning right and then right again, saliva, I’m certain, flapping from the free edges of the dental dam.
    When I get there, it’s a relief to be alone in the cubicle, and to know that the worst of the procedure is behind me. The window is frosted glass but I can hear noise through the vent at the top, the sounds of human traffic in the nearby mall, people with the time and opportunity to shop in the mid-afternoon.
    I’m sure I smell sweaty, and the right side of my face is numb from the cheek down. I wipe my forehead with the tissues. Time to go back.
    I turn right into the corridor and keep going until I reach a door. It must have been open when I was on myway down here, though I don’t remember it, open or closed. I go through it and it shuts behind me. Shuts behind me, with a disconcerting locking kind of sound.
    There’s another door ahead, and noise beyond it. I have come the wrong way. I have come through the fire door, and it has locked behind me.
    I wipe some saliva from my dental dam onto my sleeve, as if that’s a better place to put it. I’m by myself here, in what must be the ground floor of the fire stairs. I’m by myself, surrounded by unpainted concrete walls and with the door that I have come through carrying a prominent sign that reads ‘This door to remain locked at all times’.
    I try the handle anyway. It moves up and down five millimetres. It doesn’t open the door. Somewhere, back in the building, a computer is about seven minutes away from finishing a porcelain crown. My team is waiting.
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is paused and waiting too.
    The best I can do is take a cautious look out of the other door and into the mall. If I’m near the main entrance to the building, I can perhaps sneak back in that way. I open the door, just a crack. I recognise nothing. I stick my head around it, my hand holding back the big piece of wet blue rubber hanging out of my mouth. Still nothing.
    I have no choice here. I need help.
    I step outside, and I take off one shoe and use it to wedge the door so that it won’t lock me out. I will quietly ask someone where I am, and if they know a way back in. For the first time, saliva runs down my neck.
    â€˜Hey, Meg